The Four Noble Truths

A meditation on an awakened life

“A non-Buddhist asked the Buddha with all of her heart, “I don’t ask about words, I don’t ask about the emptiness of words.” The Buddha sat quietly. The non-Buddhist responded, “Your kindness is without measure. You have scattered the clouds of my confusion and have opened the way for me.” She bowed deeply and left the world honored one’s presence. The Buddha’s attendant, Ananda, asked, “Sir, what did she see that caused her to praise you?” The Buddha replied, “She is like the finest horse, that takes off at full gallop, with just the shadow of a whip.”

Gateless Gate[1]

Zen is about awakening. Always.

It is about the same awakening as found by our first ancestor in untold antiquity.

It is a universalist vision. Not owned by any one in particular. And it evolved in specific cultures. And is very much the fruit of those specific cultures.

Zen’s way in to awakening is at heart a Chinese version of Buddhism. China, that ancient civilization rooted in practicality. The original nation of shop keepers. And at the same time a nation of poets. Both are critical to Zen. China’s two indigenous religions show that in high profile. Confucianism is always practical, it’s all about right relationships with a heavy emphasis on here and now. And Taoism is a counterpoint, all about the dark places, flowing water, and dreaming the mother of the ten thousand things. Shop keepers and poets. A cradle for the Zen way.

It cannot be overstated. Zen is heavily shaped by China, and particularly indigenous Chinese religions. That said, and its importance cannot be overstated, Zen’s beating heart is found within the Mahayana schools of Buddhism. Zen forms in China, but its deepest roots are in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas. So, knowing just a little about what Buddhism is, is critical for any understanding Zen.

Buddhism’s founder, Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, lived somewhere between three, or four, or maybe five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, near what is now the border between Northern India and Nepal. There are no independent accounts of his life. Everything we know is contained in the sacred writings of the tradition. None of them were written down until hundreds of years after he died. And none of these texts we have are in Magadhi Prakrit, the language he spoke.

So, we don’t have that much certainty about the Buddha and his life. Although the mainstream of scholars are certain, or close enough to certain, that the Buddha was a real person. He probably was born to wealth and power. Later he renounced it to become a wandering mendicant. He had some great awakening.

Awakening. There are several versions of what that awakening was. The Zen schools tell of an extended period of meditating in the shade of a tree when he looked up at the morning star. Some shift occurred. With this he exclaimed, “At this moment I and all the beings of this great earth have attained the way!”

And. There are those other versions of what he said out of this moment. But Zen’s great insight is in to the heart of a matter that exists right here, where we find a human sitting under a tree and looking at the morning start. Here and in this place as the birthing of great miracles.

The traditions say the Buddha was thirty-five when he had this transformative experience. And he is believed to have lived for eighty years. So, forty-five years of assimilating this understanding and sharing it with others. He gathered around him a group of followers, and constantly taught. He first created a company of monks, and later added in a company of nuns. He moved among the poor and the rich and powerful. His admirers listened and repeated his teachings. Eventually they were written down.

There is a wonderful brief summary of his teachings. They are foundational to any understanding of Zen. Of course, Buddhism and Zen are vastly larger than this. But it carries the core of his message. They describe the heart of awakening as expressed in Zen.

They are called the Four Noble Truths.

There is some confusion about how what we call the Four Noble Truths became the central icon of Buddhist teachings. The Truths are found in two versions in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the "Sutra or Discourse of the Great Turning of the Wheel." This text claims to contain the first sermon the Buddha gave after his great awakening.

Many critics can and do point to textual inconsistencies as evidence the Truths were actually woven out of earlier materials. And most scholars believe the Four Truths didn’t become normative until as late as the fifth century of our common era.

Buddhism is a vast and complex tradition. And finding a single summation of the Buddhist way and teachings can be difficult. Still, today, all schools of Buddhism agree that the Four Truths are foundational observations of Buddhism. And it is significant they appear in the text that purports to be the first sermon the Buddha preached.

First. Human suffering, anguish, angst.[3] This is that visceral noticing of some disquiet that haunts all of us. It points to the sorrow that haunts human existence. It is not having what we want, and not wanting what we have. This disquiet is a sense of dis-ease that shadows human life. And more broadly it’s the tension of all existence.

Second. We are composed of parts in constant motion. In truth we’re constantly being created and destroyed. While these "parts" are in fact all insubstantial, our human minds perceive each moment in motion as if it were solid. When we hold too tightly[4] onto that which is constantly changing we experience this disequilibrium. It’s the ultimate fallacy of our organizing brains. It serves us in many ways, but ultimately it betrays us.

Third. The good news that we need not suffer this way.[5] It is within our capacity to break the cycles of clinging and suffering. As some say, pain is unavoidable. But suffering, certainly the worst suffering, is optional.

Fourth. The path, the middle way. Usually this is called the Eight-fold Path of Liberation. There is technical language: Right, correct, profitable View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration

I’ve found it very helpful to divide these eight aspects into three parts: The middle way consists of Wisdom, Morality and Meditation.[6]

Sometimes this description of pervasive human dis-ease can easily be understood as a plain assertion life itself is suffering. As the second of the truths points out suffering comes about from clinging, well. The solution seems pretty obvious. Do not cling to anything. And there’s an easy slide from there. Not clinging to anything means not caring about anything.

Gore Vidal in his novel Creation, has the Buddha always gazing into the middle distance, never actually engaging. I’ve met Buddhists who think this is in fact the point of the Four Truths, including some monastics, and the odd Zen teacher. However, for many Buddhists, and especially Zen Buddhists, as we unpack our disquiet, something different appears. And with that different solutions to the fundamental problem appear.

What the Buddha taught that is critical for us to understand is that everything, any “thing,” and this includes you and me; we’re all impermanent. There are no abiding substances, everything is created by causes and conditions flowing together and then breaking apart, creating new things. And, this is so important, that coming together is for a moment. It’s all in motion. I’ve come to call this motion, especially as we experience it, the buzz.

Our human sense of disquiet arises out of the buzz as a side effect of our wonderful human ability to notice and distinguish. The side effect of our noticing and distinguishing is to reify. That is to make what we’ve perceived and distinguished something “permanent.” What we might think of as real in the sense of abiding. When, of course, what everything as it really is, is dynamic.

Everything is constantly forming and living and dying. And nothing and no one is ever permanent. The buzz is the background noise of existence. For us as human beings what seems naturally to follow our grasping on to what is passing, holding too tightly that which of its nature is in motion. is hurt. Dis-ease. It’s that abiding disquiet.

And. And. The good news is not a list of how to not care, but rather a middle way. Middle way not in the sense of splitting the differences, but in finding the liminal between. In this sense here between thinking only motion exists, or that things and people have eternal substance. Instead the Middle Way finds us tumbling into a larger and mysteriously healing view.

In fact, this is more than a view, it is a new way of living. It’s sometimes called enlightenment. I prefer awakening. It’s always there. It’s the natural of the natural perennial. Our original ancestor saw it under the African sun. Our Buddhist ancestor saw it in the foothills of the Himalayas. It has been noticed from every corner of the world.

The perennial we see is a beautiful dance of creation, where we rise and fall together, where our love matters because it is our giving our attention to the precious and passing. It becomes a sort of unknowing, or not knowing, because our sense of self and other are loosened, and we experience each other's joy and sorrow as our joy and sorrow.

And with that shift life takes on an aspect more important than words like "meaning" or "meaninglessness" can touch. These turn out to be sticky words, that we cling to. But which only increase our hurt. We find ourselves trapped in an echo chamber of our own creation.

And so, the Buddha offered this teaching to help us through. And Zen and other ancestors manifested out of that teaching ways for us to find this place. The eight-fold path. Me, I can never hold the eight steps in my mind. But I can understand when they’re divided into three those aspects of awakening: Wisdom. Morality. The Meditation. Really, the Path itself.

First. Wisdom, that is our nondual insight. Here we see that world which includes each of us as we rise and fall but in the same instance know it is boundless.[7] Here we see beyond the snares of our imaginations.

Second. Morality, that is our walking a path of harmony. Here sometimes it is rules that hold us together, sometimes it is a description of our awakening itself.[8] And it is found written on our hearts, and yet has a life beyond our fears and desires.

And Third. Meditation, those practices of presence that allow us to see our sense of separateness is useful but not ultimately true. Here the wisdom of sitting down, shutting up, and paying attention. The technologies of the spiritual life. We will be returning to this.[9]

So, the Four Nobel Truths. Truths? Really good ideas? Working hypotheses?

Perhaps an assertion and an invitation.

---

[1] Gateless Gate, Case 32. Also in the Blue Cliff Record, as case 65. Author’s version.

[2] Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting with the Body of the Earth, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p 14

[3] Dukkha in Sanskrit

[4] Samudaya in Sanskrit

[5] Nirodha in Sanskrit

[6] Marga in Sanskrit.

[7] Prajñā in Sanskrit

[8] Śīla in Sanskrit

[9] Samādhi in Sanskrit